"We, as a community, can make a positive difference to those living in fuel poverty."

As a charity, THAW Orkney is dependent on grants and donations to maintain its service provision. To date THAW provides its services free to all of its clients and does not have any plans to change this.

If you wish to make a donation to THAW then we would be very grateful and all monies donated is used to directly benefit the client and his/her fuel poverty circumstances.

There are a number of ways you can donate either by a one-off donation or a regular weekly/monthly/annual contribution:

1. By cheque

By posting or hand-delivering a cheque to the THAW Office at THAW Orkney, 15 Victoria Street, Kirkwall, Orkney, KW15 1DN

2. By BACs transfer

Please contact the office if you prefer this method and we will provide you with the details to make the transfer. Please contact us at: info@thaworkney.co.uk3. Through fund raising

A number of organisations have arranged fund raising events and if you would like to do so and would like some help in this please contact us at info@thaworkney.co.uk

4. Through enabling a FITs contribution

THAW and Orkney Renewable Energy Forum (OREF) have joined forces to combat Fuel Poverty issues through a contributing though FITs initiative:

Robert Leslie, Chair of THAW Orkney has highlighted the fact that, "THAW Orkney has found that the situation in Orkney appears even worse than we first thought. Our staff have been in touch with almost 400 households since launching its service in early 2016. While fuel poverty is defined as having to spend 10% of income on all household energy, we’ve found that almost 20% of the households we have seen would have to spend over 40% of income to heat their homes adequately, putting them deep into the extreme fuel poverty category."

As one aspect of addressing this growing problem, THAW and OREF have been discussing how best we can work together to tackle fuel poverty across the Orkney Islands and one initiative that has emerged is the wind turbine initiative.

OREF chairman Dr Gareth Davies said: "A large number of Orkney renewable energy generators, primarily privately owned domestic wind turbines, receive an income from Feed-in Tariff generation amounting to approximately £750 per kilowatt of generating capacity per year. The generating capacity for these turbines in Orkney is around 5000kW or 5MW in total.

"The benefit from these domestic turbines is gained by individuals, but is paid for through costs on all of our electricity bills. Often those on low incomes have poorly insulated houses and correspondingly large electricity bills, whereas, many of the more well-off have been able to insulate their houses and so pay less for their energy. Electricity therefore often takes a much larger proportion of the income of less well-off households, meaning that the burden of paying for the FIT falls disproportionately on the poor."

In Orkney it is estimated that each domestic electricity customer pays approximately £32 per year towards FIT payments. This equates to around £320,000 being paid out annually from Orkney towards FITs. This means that the socialised cost to Orkney of a 5kW wind turbine is approximately £90 per year, compared to an income of around £3750 for the turbine owner.

Dr Davies explained: "Paying just £7.50 per month – £90 per year – for a 5kW turbine would represent approximately 2.5% of income. If we can get half of the nearly 5MW of small scale wind in the county to participate then this would provide THAW Orkney around £56,000 per year to invest in fuel poverty alleviation."

If you would like more information or to discuss this initiative then please contact us at info@thaworkney.co.uk or telephone the Manager on 01856 878388.

(OREF’s website also outlines the initiative and can be accessed at: http://www.oref.co.uk/renewable-energy-affordable-warmth-bodies-come-together-boost-funds-fight-fuel-poverty/)

5. Gift AidA number of our donors assist THAW even more at no expense to themselves through Gift Aid.

Gift Aid is a government scheme whereby charities are able to claim an additional 25p for every £1 donation if the donor is a UK Tax Payer.

If you are interested in making this contribution please contact us at info@thaworkney.co.uk or telephone the Manager on 01856 878388.

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Thank you for taking the time to read this information and we hope you feel able to make a contribution to assist THAW in combating fuel poverty across the Orkney Islands.